tag:blog.tmcnet.com,2014:/blog/tom-keating//4/tag:blog.tmcnet.com,2006:/blog/tom-keating//4.25662-Comments for TMC Labs Innovation Awards (plug)VoIP & Gadgets blog - Latest news in VoIP & gadgets, wireless, mobile phones, reviews, & opinionsMovable Type 4.38tag:blog.tmcnet.com,2006:/blog/tom-keating//4.256622006-05-23T16:04:42Z2008-04-10T21:35:19ZTMC Labs Innovation Awards (plug)Tom Keatinghttp://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/
this Thursday. I want to be sure everyone is aware of this award opportunity. I consider the TMC Labs Innovation Awards to be TMC’s most prestigious award, though I am bit biased since I am one of the judges.

This award is now in its 6th year and yet there are only 20-25 winners selected per year for the TMC Labs Innovation Awards. The winners are grouped together with other innovative leaders in the VoIP industry which certainly lends credibility to the smaller VoIP players that win this award.

In a nutshell, we are looking for unique and innovative products. We're looking for products that start a new trend, do something old in a new way, or take a bunch of features often in separate products and combine it into a single easy-to-use platform. Best of breed products can win this award, but only if they do something unique versus their competitors.

I often get asked if we do categories for the TMC Labs Innovation Awards. My response is that we don't do categories for the simple reason that each applicant is competing with innovative products from ALL product categories with only a limited number of winners selected. We just try and pick the most innovative awards, with the most unique attributes, so you will often see more than one winner in a similar product genre. We feel that choosing categories pigeonholes the process and forces us to find innovative products in each category. We'd rather pick the most innovative products instead.

We do very detailed 300-500 word write-ups – these are not simply company name, product name, category that many awards do. TMC Labs does in-depth analysis of each applicant and leverages our knowledge of the industry and our visits to industry-related tradeshows (Internet Telephony Expo) where we often actually see and demo many of the applicants' products. We've had such a diverse list of winners such as Alcatel, Audiocodes, Grandstream, Level 3, Nortel, Vonage, and Xten (Counterpath).